question to dealers

this question may seem odd, the reasoning why i ask is after the question

my question is

does the device (whater its called) that dealers use to check for a blackjack
make it easier to check for a blackjack or do some cards make you look a split second longer/double check, just like manually checking for blackjack would.......




Dealer telling basically the dealer giving unintentional signals that he either has or has not a good hand total (obviously before you see his total)...One such way of doing this is when the dealer lifts up his hole card to see if he has a blackjack given how high he lifts it you can generalize what he has (this is after you have watched the dealer deal a decent amount and payed close attention) for example he will lift a 4 higher then a 10........

ive noticed sometimes that when the dealer checks for blackjack he does a sort of double check or a little longer then normal check for blackjack which after awhile pretty much gave away he doesnt have a good total.....the guy seemed pretty new though so maybe that was it.....

As a UK dealer, we dont have a hole card to check, but from experience of glancing at cards, the cards with a lot of spots such as 8 or 9 could lead to a dealer looking longer as they appear similar at first glance to a 10. If you see paint you know its a blackjack, if not closer examination may be required.

Quote: Hollywood06

does the device (whater its called) that dealers use to check for a blackjack
make it easier to check for a blackjack or do some cards make you look a split second longer/double check ....
the dealer giving unintentional signals that he either has or has not a good hand total

Somewhere around the zillionith hand I doubt the dealer cares.

Actually, the loupe that allows a dealer to peek at his hole card does NOT tell him what the value of that hole card is. So he would not know if the card were "good" or not, only if the game continues or not.

Players who want to look for "dealer tells" will generally be wasting their time since the device does not impart the information to the dealer that you think it does. The hole card could be a "2" or a "9", but all the dealer knows is that the device revealed "white space" so the game proceeds. Since the dealer does not have the information as to the cards actual value, he could not develop a tell or communicate any sort of advantage-giving information to the player.

aah. I misread the question. I was thinking back to the good ol' days of dealers actually peeking, not something that peeked for them.

It may well be that those good old days of a dealer actually peeking may indeed have allowed such tells to develop or more likely the casino was unnecessarily paranoid about such things and that is why these devices were invented. I understand there are actually two different types of devices in use and there may some nuances but in general the casinos have procedures whereby a peek is performed in a certain manner and reveals nothing that a dealer could either knowingly or unknowingly communicate to a bettor.

I'm not a dealer, but I can say there are two types of these devices. One is electronic, where the dealer just has to press a button, and it reads whether the down card forms a blackjack. The other is basically a mirror, and is supposed to only indicate blackjack or no blackjack. With those the dealer will put the hole card under it either vertically or horizontally, depending on whether the up card is a 10 or ace. The card maker positions the value of the card in the corner in such a way that the dealer only sees what he needs to see to confirm or deny a blackjack.

That said, I've noticed sometimes the dealers take a little longer to look at the card with the mirror readers than other times. There are theories that if the dealer takes a while, or does a double peek, it is correlated to the hole card, but I don't remember how.

It used to be that the dealers actually bent the cards and peeked. A common advantage play was to get a read on the dealer, because he knew specifically what the hole card was. That was done via body position and the pupils of the eyes. I won't get into the details, because nobody peeks that way any longer in Vegas, as far as I know.

On a related note, don't buy used (or new) blackjack decks from a casino if you want to play poker at home.

The way the mirror works is the A-9 cards have the value printed LOWER on the card than 10-J-Q-K, so when they put the card in the reader, they either see the value of the ten (blackjack, hand over) or the blank of the A-9 (because it's printed lower). When they check a 10-J-Q-K they put the card in on the Opposite corner (upper RIGHT or lower LEFT) and on Aces, there is a symbol there (a star, the casino logo), on all other cards there is nothing. So there is no way for the dealer to know what the card is. They either see the value that completes the blackjack or nothing. The only read you could get is if the casino checks the WRONG corner. In my many years playing at places with the mirrors, this has happened around 3 times. Once they checked the wrong corner, the dealer actually had blackjack (something like a Queen up). One time I distinctly remember the dealer checking the wrong corner, proceeding with the hand, then realizing she had blackjack halfway through the hand, and calling the pit boss. Never has it been possible to use it to my advantage.

The reason these cards are bad for poker is people have to lift the card higher to read the value if it's not a 10-J-Q-K. Granted, they have to do it for Aces also, but still, you can get a decent read if you know how these cards work.